CERA (CErtification of RAw Materials) is a four-year project that will develop a standardized certification scheme ensuring environmental, social and economic sustainability in extraction, processing, trading and manufacturing of all mineral raw materials. It will guarantee traceability of certified…

Where and how are critical materials currently used and how can this information be used to develop scenarios about their future demand.

Over the past century, the world population has grown exponentially, as has our need for energy and raw materials. If we wish to continue to live prosperously in the future, we have to radically restructure our economy and consumption. Scientific research shows us how to do this.

Over the past century, the world population has grown exponentially, as has our need for energy and raw materials. If we wish to continue to live prosperously in the future, we have to radically restructure our economy and consumption. Scientific research shows us how to do this.

Cars, wind turbines, solar panels and smartphones. ‘Critical’ raw materials like platinum or cobalt are used in all the technologies that are essential for the energy and digital transition. But we should be aware of the scarceness of these materials, a new campaign warns.

A scenario building web-tool and knowledge package to enable multi-level decision making for the transition to the Circular Economy

The electrochemical reduction of a group of organic compounds on platinum is strongly dependent on the arrangement of the atoms in the platinum surface. Christoph Bondue, postdoc in Marc Koper's group, published this in Nature Catalysis on 4 March. The reduction of such compounds is an important process…

Some examples of research questions include: What framework of circular strategies should local practitioners use? How should practitioners organize their monitoring of the circular economy activities in the region of interest? What are the main products that have the most circular potential in the…

On 15 April 2017, the Journal of WTO and China published Richard Jiang's article entitled 'Can Public International Law Play a Role in China - Raw Materials II?'

Last week, the results of the 2016 call for proposals of the European Institute of Technology Raw Materials (EIT RM) became available. Both Leiden University and Delft Unversity of Technology are partners in this Knowledge and Innovation Community, in which some 100 research institutes, industries and…

Can we develop a platform for raw materials intelligence?

1) Assess the trends in supply and production status of these critical minerals and mineral products worldwide and Europe’s dependence including on intermediate products such as permanent magnets, RE based super alloys, batteries, polishing compounds, phosphors, catalysts etc. 2) Trace the entire value…

Provenance and distribution of raw materials

How can prospective LCA be streamlined in a way that its practical application in research and technology development increases?

This subproject, carried out by post-doctoral researcher Dr. O. Nieuwenhuyse, investigates changes and continuities in the functional, social and symbolic uses of the material culture, c. 6800-5800 BC. A contextually oriented approach is adopted, which pays attention to the local socio-economic and…

What are the flows of C&DW (e.g. bricks, concrete, gypsum and wood) in the case study countries ? How to define the specification for each material to be quantified? What indicators should be used to identify the pattern of each C&DW management system? How to interpret the MFA results in relation…

The project “Digital Materials” is about the conception, exploration and analysis of possibilities to make digital processes directly operative and tangible in physical materials and examines how the fiction of these “Digital Materials” could affect on figures of interaction between human subjects and…

Long Island, an islet of Antigua in the northern Lesser Antilles forms the major source for flint in the Lesser Antilles. A survey by Hofman, Hoogland and van Gijn in 1989 has indicated the presence of various raw material sources. Test-excavations at the major flintknapping site of Flinty Bay show…

All of our courses require you to do (background) reading. This may include books, readers and/or materials uploaded to the online learning environment Blackboard. An overview of the literature you need to study can be found in the course description in the online prospectus, under the heading ‘Reading…

All our courses require you to do (background) reading. This may include books, readers and/or materials uploaded to the online learning environment Blackboard. You can find an overview of the literature you need to study in the course description in the online prospectus, under the heading ‘Reading…

This project looks at material culture to better understand the character and organization of Roman colonial society in the Republican period, with a focus on the colony of Aesernia (founded 263 BC) in Samnium (modern-day Molise, Italy). What impact did the foundation of the colony have on precolonial…

Material Culture Studies revolves around the analysis of the cultural biographies of all sorts of material objects from flint axes, to pottery, to houses and monumental structures.

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Industrialised countries mine raw materials in areas inhabited by Indigenous Peoples and appropriate the knowledge and culture of these peoples. Leiden anthropologists work to protect their rights.

We live in a world of things and people in the past must have been as closely entangled with their material surroundings as we are now. In the Laboratory for Artefact Studies Van Gijn takes a close look at the biographies of objects: what kind of raw material an object is made off and what is its provenience,…

Please find below links to articles / events that might be of interest.

What are the mechanics of soft materials (e.g. foam, sand)?

It is not man’s ingenuity, but rather materials that are the source of innovation and progress. This is what archaeologist Maikel Kuijpers concludes based on his research into craftsmanship and material processing in the Early Bronze Age.

There have been recycling bins in all of the University buildings since 2018. Waste bins were removed from staff offices at the same time. Waste such as paper, batteries and printer cartridges is now collected in separate streams. But the big question is: what happens to the different waste streams?…

Please find below links to articles / events that might be of interest.

Research on the global field of museums, heritage, commemoration, consumption and material culture

Proceedings of the International Colloquium Leiden, May 29 and 30, 2008

Examining if large scale application of new energy pathways can be constrained by materials and emissions.

The E2CB programme has been launched to bring CO2 emissions to zero by 2050. The goal: to produce all raw materials for the chemical industry from sustainable sources. Professor of Electrochemistry Marc Koper is involved in the project.

Ongoing microwear analysis of the flint artefacts from the Funnelbeaker period suggests that flint had a pivotal role in the representation and structuration of the cosmological order of Funnelbeaker society.

New Approaches to the Study of Textual Material from the Early Pharaonic to the Late Antique Period

Understanding Late Neolithic Ceramic Containers from Upper Mesopotamia

New Approaches to Understanding the Eastern Mediterranean during Byzantine and Ottoman Times

The programme’s courses deal with current approaches in material culture theory, analytical methods and techniques employed in artefact studies, and experimental archaeology.

An account of the total of material flows going in, out and through Amsterdam.

The research involves the application and combination of archaeological and archaeometrical methodologies. Petrographic analysis and isotopic provenance studies of raw materials and exotics, and the study of the distribution patterns of these materials are used to gain insight into the exchange of goods…

RaMa-Scene is a web-application to create and analyse circular economy scenarios using Multi-regional Environmentally Extendend Input-Output Analysis.

In my group (the Aarts lab) we combine or structure materials, mostly in thin film form, in such a way that the hybrid has different and novel properties or functionalities.

The transition to new and renewable energy sources should be completed by 2050. Researchers in various disciplines at Leiden University are conducting unique research that will help us make this transition and reduce CO2 emissions.

Dynamics of material, social and ideological relationships in the pre-Columbian insular Caribbean

Perception of material culture, design and digital knowledge applications

Self-assembly is an abundant process in nature and is vital to many processes in living organisms.

The group of Dr. Roxanne Kieltyka designs and synthesizes molecules that self-assemble into polymeric materials using specific non-covalent interactions. These substrates can be used for numerous applications in medicine ranging from disease detection to cell delivery depending on the (bio)molecular…

Promotor: E. Bouwman, Co-Promotor: S. Bonnet